Want To Create Change Quickly? Start by Taking a Walk.
Strong Towns members conducting a walking audit at the National Gathering 2024. (Photo by ZED Images.)
The Strong Towns Crash Analysis Studio has helped residents of cities across North America review serious crashes in their communities. Studio sessions were held in urban, suburban and rural locations across North America. In each Studio, technical and local experts — people who live near and/or routinely travel through the locations of crashes — identified many factors that contributed to each crash. The most startling factors found in the Studios were those hiding in plain sight. These are factors that local experts both observed while documenting the crashes and learned from their personal experiences at the locations.
Each local expert shared observations about the streets in question or on driver behavior in the locations that were neither evident in the crash report nor what a transportation expert would expect.
For example, in Brandon, Manitoba, the local experts pointed out that yield signs had been installed on the cross streets at a four-way intersection. That’s right, where we would expect to see stop signs, yield signs had been installed, instead. No matter how careful or thoughtful a street or intersection designer is, the contractor who builds it or the street maintenance department that cares for it may make adjustments they didn't anticipate. The deviations can occur intentionally or through neglect or unintentional oversight. At times, these changes can introduce conflicts or decrease safety in unanticipated ways.
The incorrectly installed signs were hiding in plain sight, and it took the observation of a local expert to point out this mistake.
In Madison, Wisconsin, local experts observed that a parking lane near the crash site was commonly used for acceleration, deceleration and turning maneuvers. This improper use of the parking lane meant that drivers had to engage in more complex decision-making with minimal margin for error. That increased complexity was a contributing factor in a driver hitting a pedestrian while making a right-hand turn on red.
This kind of improper driver behavior hides in plain sight and runs counter to the designer's intent. Again, this is only evident to local experts who experience this intersection daily.
However, there is a way that people who are not local experts can identify these hidden issues: conducting a walking audit.
There is nothing more memorable and impactful than experiencing our communities with each other on foot. Something as simple as a walk allows us to have a conversation informed by the existing conditions, as well as letting us illustrate items like the economic benefits of pedestrian-friendly designs to local officials. Walking audits also help reveal how urban design impacts daily life and community sustainability. A walking audit is the easiest and most powerful public engagement tool that any community can use to make their streets safer.
A walking audit can provide quick assessments to validate or challenge the design team's assumptions and to verify the implementation of the design team’s intent and the design's overall safety. If an error is identified, it can quickly be fixed or addressed.
In addition to members of the design team and traffic safety officials, a good audit will include a cross section of the municipality’s experts in areas such as engineering, planning, maintenance and law enforcement. It will also include any individual in the area known to have a disability or particular struggle that will be impacted by the design.
We cannot catch every deviation or mistake, but we can address many mistakes through keen observation. In both of these examples, simple maintenance changes could be deployed through a standard street maintenance work order. In Brandon, the yield signs need to be replaced with stop signs; in Madison, bollards or rubber curbs could be installed to stop drivers from misusing the parking lane. These are familiar tasks to street maintenance crews and can be undertaken with resources found on the shelf in the maintenance yard.
If you’re interested in learning more, join us for a virtual press conference on Tuesday, October 15. We're officially releasing a report that consolidates and analyzes insights from the Crash Analysis Studio: "Beyond Blame: How Cities Can Learn From Crashes To Create Safer Streets Today."
"Beyond Blame" is focused on this animating insight: Every fatal crash that occurs on our streets has something to teach us. And cities can respond to those lessons immediately.
Edward Erfurt is the Director of Community Action at Strong Towns. He is a trained architect and passionate urban designer with over 20 years of public- and private-sector experience focused on the management, design, and successful implementation of development and placemaking projects that enrich the tapestry of place. He believes in community-focused processes that are founded on diverse viewpoints, a concern for equity, and guided through time-tested, traditional town-planning principles and development patterns that result in sustainable growth with the community character embraced by the communities which he serves.